This invention relates to apparatus and method of assembling and locating the components of a flexible damped bearing with respect to the shaft of a rotary machine, such as a turbine or a compressor.
The term flexible damped bearing, as herein used, refers to an assembly wherein the bearing is mounted within a movable support and the support suspended from the machine frame upon a series of resilient spring-like flexure elements. A fluid squeeze film is also created between the resiliently suspended bearing support and the stationary frame of the machine. The combined effect of the resilient springs and the fluid squeeze film is to provide the bearing system with a tuned response capable of attenuating shaft induced vibrations encountered at resonant frequencies. For a more complete disclosure relating to the design and implementation of flexible damped bearings, reference is had to U.S. Pat. No. 3,456,992 and NASA Technical Note D-7892, published February 1975. Although the flexible damped bearing is known to be an ideal device for isolating the bearing system from a machine frame, its use, particularly in heavy machinery, has heretofore been limited because of the many problems involved in assembling and aligning the various bearing components. Misalignment of bearing components results in nonuniform preloading of the resilient springs, producing a nonsymmetrical response in the spring system and deformation of the squeeze film cavity. As a consequence, the bearing fails to perform as predicted. Setup and assembly problems become more pronounced as the mass of the rotor structure increases.